In honor of the season: a poem. "The Laying-Out" was written in October 2003 and published in December 2004 in Mythic Delirium #11. Ray Bradbury can probably be blamed.
The Laying-Out
Here were bones that the wind
leaved over, pale as birch
in the lengthening year's shade,
the frost-veined twilight
that holds earth and starkened
trees fast in close indigo
stasis: its balancing point fixed
and unwieldy as wind
turning one leaf to another's
arid face, laying down
the season like a shroud; colder
than a final breath, probing
as the bone reminiscent beneath
blood-pulsed flesh, sinew,
all that strips away when summer
shrinks back to show
the dead grin of this season
under its mask of leaves.
Happy Halloween, all!
The Laying-Out
Here were bones that the wind
leaved over, pale as birch
in the lengthening year's shade,
the frost-veined twilight
that holds earth and starkened
trees fast in close indigo
stasis: its balancing point fixed
and unwieldy as wind
turning one leaf to another's
arid face, laying down
the season like a shroud; colder
than a final breath, probing
as the bone reminiscent beneath
blood-pulsed flesh, sinew,
all that strips away when summer
shrinks back to show
the dead grin of this season
under its mask of leaves.
Happy Halloween, all!
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